Every few months, our pal Daniel Ruby, research director for ad firm Chitika, takes a look at the market capitalization of Android devices. As of early November, the original Motorola Droid still holds an astounding lead in the market with nearly 19%. The HTC EVO 4G checks in to second place with 12%, followed by the Droid X at 10%. The Incredible (7%) and Vibrant (5%) round out the top five.

The Archos 5 has never been the most popular Android tablet - it has its plusses and minuses, but the 500GB version at almost half off that popped up on Amazon today may make you forgive and forget some of its flaws. Considering that with the Market hack, Archos 5 gets full access to the Android Market, this little device could end up being the largest portable media hub you can get for the price.

Despite the frequency with which I check the XDA forums, I'd never heard of Kite UI before today. You may think that another UI alternative is the last thing Android needs, but give Kite UI a glance and you'll realize it's pretty mind-blowingly awesome... or at least, the concept video makes it look that way.

At the moment, the project is still in the process of being coded, but the team is looking for help.

I may be stating the obvious here, but stay with me: most people reading this right now probably own a number of expensive gadgets - for example, a phone, a digital camera, or an MP3 player. It's also safe to say that just about everyone who isn't living under a rock knows that liquids and electronics rarely go well together. So then, what's a gadgeter to do when they expect to encounter liquids but want to keep using their electronics?

T-Mobile UK is certainly digging itself into a ditch on this one, and seriously pissing customers off in the process. You can't really blame people for being upset: after promising the Froyo update for Samsung Galaxy S owners by November 30 via FOTA, then reiterating just two days ago that the update was ready to roll out, they've now pushed it back at least a week. Turns out they're also not going to be able to do it over-the-air, either - rather, it's going to be installed with Samsung KIES instead.

Wow, this went unnoticed for a while, didn't it? On November 23rd, Google's own GoogleinHK YouTube account posted a video walkthrough of the new Google Voice Search in Cantonese. With only 2100 views, this official Google-authored video did not grab anyone's attention, until someone noticed that it featured over a minute of the clearest Gingerbread user interface video we've seen to date. The greens, the blacks - it's all there. Have a look:

Update #2: the original video was pulled but luckily, I found another copy:

If you love devouring Android stats, Google's Android Platform Versions sub-site, which is updated about once a month, just got refreshed with the latest batch of data. Last month, Froyo ate up some 36% of the pie, while Éclair was found to be running on about 41% of devices, with the remaining 23% being taken up by Cupcake and Donut.

As you can see for yourself in the graph above, this month was quite a turn-around - Froyo (at 43.4%) finally stole the throne from Éclair, which was left with 39.6%.

Completely unexpectedly and without much fanfare, Google just dropped its official Google Reader app into the Market. I gave it a quick look and found that it's basically a great interface to the mobile version, lacking any advanced features (such as pre-caching) or settings.

The 3 great things about it are:

Google Reader login integration, which uses your phone's built-in Google auth, after you grant it permission. This means the app never asks for login credentials.

If you're like me, you've been longing for cable-free syncing ever since you got your Android phone. Well, the wait has now ended, thanks to doubleTwist, otherwise known as the iTunes of Android devices.

Their latest update includes a handy new feature called AirSync, which does exactly what its name implies: it syncs your music, videos, and photos over the air. The desktop client and the regular Android app (both of which you'll need for AirSync to work) are still 100% free, but the AirSync feature itself will cost you $4.99 (on sale for $0.99 until 10,000 people download it).

Welcome to the weekly roundup of the best new Android applications and games that went live in the Market in the previous week or so. This roundup is a day late, apologies for that - the Theft Aware review stole a lot of my time.

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